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The new rules of creativity: nine mind hacks to boost your brain

This article was taken from the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

According to a recent survey of 1,500 chief executives from all over the world, the most important skill they seek in employees is creativity. New ideas, after all, are the ultimate source of economic growth.

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But this only raises the question: how can we generate more creativity?

How can we inspire people to have more new ideas? If we designed a workplace that was all about maximising innovation, then what would that workplace look like? What follows is a short list of scientifically tested ideas that can boost the imagination, transforming the typical office into a wellspring of creativity.

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Paint the walls blue

A few years ago, a team of psychologists at the University of British Columbia looked at the influence of different colours on how people think. They recruited 600 subjects, most of them undergraduates, and asked them to perform a variety of basic cognitive tests displayed against red, blue or neutral-coloured backgrounds. The differences were striking. When taking tests against red backgrounds, they were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes. According to the scientists, this is because people automatically associate red with danger, which makes them more alert and aware.

The colour blue, however, carried a completely different set of psychological benefits. Although people in this group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on those that required using their imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy out of simple geometric shapes. In fact, subjects in the blue condition generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red condition.

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The scientists explain this strange result by pointing out that blue triggers associations with the sky and ocean. People think about expansive horizons and diffuse light, sandy beaches and lazy summer days. We are instantly relaxed. As a result, it's easier to focus on those possibilities simmering in our imagination. Next time you need a new idea, seek out a loft-like space with high ceilings and lots of windows. Or just paint your walls blue.

Take more breaks

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity: those blessed with talent still produce works of occasional mediocrity. This is because creativity isn't just about new ideas -- it's also about evaluating those ideas and sifting through the clutter to find what's actually worthwhile. A study led by Simone Ritter, a PhD student at Radboud University, Nijmegen, helps to explain how we can get better at such evaluations. In Ritter's first experiment, 112 students were given two minutes to come up with creative ideas that might alleviate a mundane problem: improving the experience of queueing at a supermarket checkout. The subjects were divided into two groups. One went straight to work; the other was instructed to perform an unrelated task for two minutes first. (They played a video game.) After writing down as many ideas as they could, both groups were asked to choose which of their ideas were the most creative. Although there was no difference in idea generation, giving the unconscious a short break proved to be a big advantage. Those who had been distracted proved better at identifying the best ideas. Whereas those in the conscious condition only picked their most innovative concepts about 20 per cent of the time -- they confused their genius with their mediocrity -- those who had been distracted pinpointed the best ideas about 55 per cent of the time. In other words, they were more than twice as good at figuring out which concepts deserved more attention.

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Think like a child

Picasso declared: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." But a study by psychologists Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson at North Dakota State University suggests that it's possible to regain the creativity we've lost to maturity. A few hundred subjects were assigned to two different groups. The first was given the following instructions: "You are seven years old, and school is cancelled. You have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?" The second group was given the same instructions, except the first sentence was deleted. After writing for ten minutes, the subjects were then given tests of creativity, such as inventing new uses for a car tyre or a brick. The students who imagined themselves as children scored far higher on the creative tasks, with nearly twice as many ideas as the other group. Picasso would be proud.

Watch more comedy

Research led by Mark Beeman from Northwestern University, Illinois, and John Kounios from Drexel University, Philadelphia, suggests that happy people are more creative. Subjects scoring high on a standard measure of happiness solved about 25 per cent more creative puzzles than those feeling angry or upset. Even fleeting feelings of delight can lead to dramatic increases in creative success: after showing people a humorous video -- the scientists use a short clip of Robin Williams's stand-up comedy -- subjects solve about 20 per cent more puzzles, at least when compared to those who are shown scary or boring videos.

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How flashes of inspiration work

1. Epiphanies seem to come out of nowhere, but your brain would have been laying the foundations for a while. When given a tough problem, its nerve cells start firing in the left hemisphere, which logically sifts through all possibilities and combinations. When it's looked in all the obvious places to no avail, you experience mental deadlock. This is a signal to the brain that a new search process is required.

2. Brain activity now shifts to the right hemisphere. According to neuroscientist Mark Beeman, this side is responsible for seeing the big picture. Now you can grasp subtle connotations -- the punchline of a joke or the meaning of a metaphor. The switch allows you to explore unexpected associations and perspectives.

3. Thirty seconds before your "aha" moment, there is a sudden burst of brain activity called a "gamma-wave rhythm" which, says Beeman, is the highest electrical frequency generated by the brain.

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It comes from neurons forming new connections. The spurt of activity comes from the anterior superior temporal gyrus, located on the right hemisphere, just above the ear.

4. Although lack of experience can be a drawback, it comes with the advantage of fresh perspective, increasing your chances of an epiphany. Dean Simonton, a psychologist at UC Davis, showed that physicists and poets make their greatest creations early in their careers. If you can leave behind your knowledge and constantly experiment with new, strange problems, you may just be inspired.

5. Giving your brain some downtime makes inspiration more forthcoming -- in the form of alpha waves radiating from the right hemisphere. They are emitted during relaxing activities such as taking a warm shower. Studies have shown that until these waves are produced, the brain will be unable to solve insight puzzles.

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The writer GK Chesterton once declared: "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

He was referring to the importance of constraints in the creative process. Although we tend to think of the imagination as benefiting from total freedom, artists and designers often rely on strict conventions and formal requirements. Pop songs have verses, choruses and refrains; symphonies have four movements; poets rely on forms with exacting specifications, such as haikus and sonnets.

Why? A new study led by Janina Marguc at the University of Amsterdam provides an interesting and unexpected answer: the frustrations of form come with a mental benefit -- letting people think in a more holistic and creative fashion.

The researchers began by asking subjects to work on anagram puzzles while a distracting voice played the role of obstacle. They then gave the subjects sensory tests to measure their ability to reason without becoming enmeshed in detail -- in terms of the old adage, being able to see the forest and the trees. Those exposed first to the obstacle showed increased "perceptual scope"; those who hadn't dealt with the hindrance lagged behind. When searching for creative solutions, we often find the answer in the forest. The trees hold us back. Such holistic thinking is often necessary when coming up with new ideas, which requires crossing the familiar boundaries of thought. This helps explain why those students first exposed to the obstacle solved 40 per cent more puzzles. The larger lesson is that the brain is a neural tangle of near-infinite possibility, which means that it spends a lot of time and energy choosing what not to notice. Creativity is traded away for efficiency; we think in literal prose, not symbolist poetry.

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It's not until we encounter a challenge we can't easily solve that the chains of cognition are loosened, giving us access to the weird connections simmering in the imagination. The benefit of obstacles also carries over into unrelated tasks, which is why starting the day with a difficult crossword puzzle or writing a haiku can help people to become better real-world problem solvers.

Don't brainstorm

Brainstorming is the most popular creativity technique. It's used in advertising offices and design firms, the classroom and the boardroom. Whenever people want to extract the best ideas from a group, they still obey the simple rules of brainstorming. The very first rule is well known: don't criticise. After all, if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they'll end up saying nothing at all.

But this turns out to be a terrible approach. Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, summarises the science: "Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas."

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The flaw, it turns out, is rooted in rule number one of brainstorming, which bans criticism. Consider this study led by Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at UC Berkeley. She divided 265 female undergraduates into five-person teams. Every team was given the same problem: how to reduce traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay Area. The teams had 20 minutes to invent as many solutions as possible. At this point, each of the teams was randomly assigned to one of three different conditions. In the "minimal" condition, the teams received no further instructions; they were free to work together however they wanted. In the "brainstorming" condition, the teams got the standard brainstorming guidelines, which emphasised the importance of refraining from criticism. Finally, there was the "debate" condition, in which the teams were given the following instructions: "Most research and advice suggests that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; don't be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. However, in addition, most studies suggest that you should debate and even criticise each other's ideas."

The results weren't even close. Whereas the brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, people in the "debate" condition were far more creative, generating on average nearly 25 per cent more ideas. But that's not all: after the groups had been disbanded, each of the subjects was asked if they had any more ideas, triggered by the earlier conversation.

Whereas people in the minimal and brainstorming conditions produced, on average, two ideas, those in the debate condition produced more than seven. It turns out we're tougher than we thought. The imagination is not meek -- it doesn't wilt in the face of conflict. Instead, it is drawn out, pulled from its usual hiding place.

Prepare to improvise

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1. Let go

Being a good improvisational artist -- whether you're a musician, a comedian or an actor -- is all about losing your inhibitions. Experiments examining the brains of jazz musicians show exactly that: a specific brain circuit called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is responsible for impulse control, was deactivated while the musicians were in improvisation mode. So a performer whose brain has learnt to shut the DLPFC up is a great improviser.

2. Learn the language

It's not enough just to forgo your better judgment. You need to have the vocabulary of your craft down pat before you can start to experiment. Harvard neuroscientist Aaron Berkowitz says of improv musicians: "There's no time to think of each individual note. They have to have some patterns in their toolbox." Once neural networks for the skill are firmly formed, they can break and reform with ease.

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3. Never question

Improvisational comedians are taught a technique called "Yes, and...". The point is to learn to improvise in an ensemble. The technique forces comedians to agree with the previous joke, no matter what they think of it. They then build upon it by setting up the next joke immediately. That way, the jokes are layered upon each other and the sketch is a product of the entire group's creativity.

4. Pretend it's a dream

According to cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the ideal state for performance is to feel like you're coming out of a dream. "Your unconscious is fully available to you, but you're still a little conscious too," he says. It's the same for comedy: you've got to be acutely aware of what's happening around you, but you've still got to learn to "leave your mind", according to improvisation instructor Andy Cobb.

Work with strangers

Many of our hardest problems require collaboration, as they exceed the capabilities of the individual imagination. We either work together or fail alone. But what's the ideal strategy for group creativity? Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern University, Illinois, spent years trying to answer these questions -- and he's done it by studying Broadway musicals. Why? Because he sees this art form as a model of collaboration. Just think of all the diverse artists who need to work together: the composer has to write songs with a lyricist; the choreographer has to work alongside the director; the director has to deal with the producer, and so on.

Uzzi undertook an epic study of nearly every musical produced on Broadway between 1945 and 1989, analysing the teams behind 474 different productions. The first thing he discovered was that the people who worked on Broadway were part of an interconnected social network; it didn't take many links to get from the librettist of

Guys and Dolls to the choreographer of Cats. Uzzi then came up with a way to measure the density of these connections, a figure he called Q. In essence, the amount of Q reflects the "social intimacy" of people working on the show, with higher levels signalling a greater degree of closeness. For instance, if a musical was being developed by a team that had worked together several times before, it would have a high Q. A musical created by a team of strangers would have a low Q.

This metric allowed Uzzi to explore the correlation between levels of Q and the success of the musical. According to the data, the relationships between collaborators was one of the most important variables on Broadway. When the Q was low, or less than 1.7, the musicals were more likely to fail: the artists didn't know each other and they struggled to exchange ideas. But when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists were so close that they all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.

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Uzzi's data led him to argue that creative collaborations have a sweet spot. "The best Broadway teams were those with a mix of relationships," Uzzi says. "These teams had some old friends, but they also had newbies. This mixture meant that they could interact efficiently, but they also managed to incorporate new ideas. They were comfortable with each other, but not too comfortable."

Uzzi's favourite example of "intermediate Q" is West Side Story. Several of its collaborators were Broadway legends who had worked together before, but, as Uzzi points out, it also benefited from new talent -- a then-unknown lyricist called Stephen Sondheim. "People have a tendency to want to only work with their friends," says Uzzi. "It feels so much more comfortable, but that's exactly the wrong thing to do. If you really want to make something great, then you're going to need to seek out some new people, too."

Aim for the sweet spot of Q.

Jonah Lehrer will be in conversation with Wired's Greg Williams at the Hospital Club in London on April 26. To win tickets see wired.co.uk. His new book,Imagine(Canongate), is out on 19 April